A card is one chart, table, funnel, or number on a dashboard, and each one answers a single question like "how many users started this experience?" You pick what the card measures, how it's drawn, and optionally a target to hold it against.

Dashboards are part of the Appcues App, which is in beta and rolling out gradually. If you don't see the Appcues App for your account yet, it hasn't been enabled. See Introducing the Appcues App for more.

Prerequisites

• A dashboard to put the card on. See Analytics dashboards overview.
• The events you want to measure already in Appcues. Events your product sends count only from the moment you start sending them. A Click to Track event created today already covers past activity, because Appcues records interactions in the background. See Raw Event Recording.

Open the card builder

Open a dashboard and click Add card. The card builder opens.

Under What do you want to measure?, choose a card type:

• Metrics — track a measurement, drawn as a trend over time, a breakdown, or a single value.
• Funnel — measure conversion across a sequence of steps within a conversion window.
• Retention — measure how many users come back after a starting event, grouped into cohorts.

Configure the card, then click Save card. The card is added to your dashboard.

Turn on Compare to break a Metrics card into multiple series by segment, account, campaign, tactic, or a dimension such as page or platform, or to compare it against the previous period. Funnel and Retention cards don't have it. See Compare metrics and measure uplift.

You can also describe the card you want to Appcues AI instead of filling in the builder. See Analytics dashboards overview.

Metrics cards

A Metrics card tracks one measurement, shown as a chart, a table, or a single large number.

1. Choose a Metric, for example Unique count of Users.
2. Under Events, click Add event to choose the event the metric applies to. Add more than one event to compare them, and each event appears as its own series on the card. The legend lists the events and appears only when the card charts more than one, with names shown in sentence case and any appcues: prefix removed.
3. At the top right of the preview, choose how to analyze the data: Trend over time, Breakdown, or Single value. Then pick a chart style from the buttons underneath.
4. Click Save card.

The three averages sit under Events in the dropdown rather than under the entity they average over, so look for Per user under Events and not under Users.

Choose Analyze as and Show as

Two controls decide how a Metrics card is drawn, and neither has a visible label on screen. The dropdown on the preview's title row sets the kind of answer you want, and it shows its current setting, such as Trend over time. The row of buttons directly below it sets the style within that. This article calls the two steps Analyze as and Show as, the names a screen reader announces for them.

The first style listed for each is its default. Changing Analyze as resets Show as to that default, so set Analyze as first and the style second. Switching styles redraws the card without re-running the query, so trying each one costs nothing.

Bars mean different things depending on what you set Analyze as to, which is what separating the two steps fixes. Under Trend over time the bars keep the time axis, one bar per period. Under Breakdown there is no time axis, and the bars compare groups instead.

A Breakdown needs more than one series, or it draws a single bar for the whole metric. Add a second event under Events, or turn on Compare and add two or more segments, accounts, campaigns, or tactics. Turning Compare on with a single item still leaves you with one bar.

A few things to know about the styles:

• With a single series, Bars and Stacked bars draw the same chart, and the bars cycle through the palette by period rather than encoding anything. Stacking appears once the card has more than one series.

• Table lists the same series as a plain data table: one row per period for a trend or one per group for a breakdown, one column per series, and an em dash where a period was never measured rather than a zero. It scrolls sideways in its own container.

• A Breakdown drawn as bars has no category axis, because there are no periods to bucket by. The legend and the card's subtitle name what the bars are.

• Most recent needs a dashboard granularity to be the most recent of. Without one it's greyed out.

Which comparisons you can add depends on what you set Analyze as to. Single value has no room for a second series, so it offers only Previous period. A Trend over time already charting more than one event is spending its series on those events, so it also offers only Previous period. A Breakdown offers all of them. See Compare metrics and measure uplift.

Show one number with Single value

Single value replaces the chart with one number, and Show as decides which period that number covers:

• Total period (default) — the cumulative total across the dashboard's whole date range.
• Most recent — the value for the latest period only.

Most recent follows the dashboard's granularity. At daily granularity you get the most recent day; at weekly, the most recent week. Change the granularity in the dashboard's Date is filter and the number updates to match. With no granularity set, Most recent is unavailable and the card won't preview or save on it.

The difference matters next to a trend line. On a dashboard set to Last 90 days, a Daily active users card left on Total period shows a 90-day total sitting beside a chart of daily movement.

Funnel cards

A Funnel card shows how many users move through a sequence of events and where they drop off.

1. Set the Conversion time window, how long a user has to complete the funnel after entering it. Enter a number, then pick days, hours, minutes, or seconds. It defaults to 14 days.
2. Under Funnel events, click Add event inside Step 1 to choose the event that puts a user into the funnel, then do the same for each later step.
3. Click Add step to extend the sequence, or the × beside a step to remove it.
4. Preview the funnel as you add steps. Until the first event is added you'll see the prompt "Add at least one event to preview the funnel".
5. Click Save card.

A step can hold more than one event. Each step reads did any of, so a user who did any event in that step has cleared it. Group equivalent actions this way, for example every route your product offers for creating an item as a single first step.

Set the conversion window to match how long users realistically take. A funnel from signup to activation with a 1-day window will read as a drop-off problem when it is really a window problem.

Retention cards

A Retention card groups users into cohorts, then shows how many of them came back and did a second event in the periods after. Use it to tell a feature that users try once from a feature that becomes a habit.

Set the Start and Return events

Under Event, two slots appear in order, each defaulting to + (Any event):

1. Start — the event that puts a user into a cohort and marks period 0 for them.
2. Return — the event that counts as coming back.

The two can be the same event. Setting both to your feature's usage event answers "of the users who used this, how many used it again?" Setting Start to a signup event and Return to a feature event answers "of the users who signed up, how many reached this feature?"

Choose how to define the cohort

Cohort definition decides what one row of the grid is:

• Start event date (default) — one row per period, holding the users whose Start event fell in it.
• Segments — one row per segment you pick. A Select segments dropdown appears below.
• Accounts — one row per account you pick. A Select accounts dropdown appears below.

Both dropdowns are searchable and take up to 10 cohorts, and an eleventh selection is ignored without a message. Click a name to add it and a checkmark appears beside it, and your picks show as a comma-separated list in the field. The card won't preview until you pick at least one, and it tells you so: "Select at least one account to cohort by."

Cohort period is read only and follows the dashboard's granularity. It reads "Weekly — follows the dashboard's granularity.", with "Daily" or "Monthly" in place of "Weekly" to match. Change the granularity in the dashboard's Date is filter to change it.

Read the cohort grid

Retention cards have their own selector above the card, separate from the Analyze as and Show as controls on Metrics cards:

• Cohort grid — a table, one row per cohort.
• Trend over time — the same data as a single retention curve.

The grid has a Cohort column naming the row, a Size column for how many users are in it, then one column per period since that cohort's Start event. D0 is the Start period itself, so its value is the share of the cohort that did the Return event in that same period. D1 is the period after, and so on.

The column letter follows the dashboard's granularity: D0, D1, D2 on a daily dashboard, W0, W1, W2 on a weekly one, and M0, M1, M2 on a monthly one.

Each cell is the share of that cohort's Size that did the Return event during that period, not a running total. Values move up and down as you read across, because a column counts only the users who came back in that period.

The first column reads 100% for every cohort whenever doing the Start event guarantees the Return event. That covers setting both slots to the same event, and it covers leaving Return on (Any event) whatever the Start event is, because any activity counts as coming back. A user who did the Start event has by definition done the Return event in that same period. Pick a Return event that the Start event doesn't guarantee and D0 becomes meaningful.

Cells are color coded in four bands: dark green at 75% and above, green from 50% to 74%, amber from 25% to 49%, and red below 25%. That lets you scan a column without reading the numbers. Retention past D0 is usually a small percentage, so a mostly red grid is normal rather than a sign the card is misconfigured. Scroll sideways for the later periods.

When you cohort by Start event date, the grid is triangular, with the newest cohorts having the fewest filled cells. A cohort that started two days ago cannot have a D7 number yet, because those seven days haven't happened. Read down a single column rather than across the bottom rows when you want to compare cohorts fairly.

When you cohort by segments or accounts the grid isn't triangular, but rows can still end at different columns. Each row runs as far as the periods its own users have lived through, so a segment whose users all started recently ends sooner than one with longer-standing users.

Watch the Size column while you do. A cohort of 4 users swings between 0% and 100% on one person's behavior, so a row of alarming reds near the bottom of the grid is usually a small cohort rather than a real drop.

Trend over time plots retention against the period offset rather than the calendar, so the x-axis runs D0, D1, D2 and the line shows the shape of the decay. Use it when you care about how quickly retention falls off rather than about individual cohorts.

Add a target to a card

Targets overlay a goal line on a Metrics card so you can see actual performance against where you want it to be. Funnel and Retention cards don't have them.

1. In the card builder, turn on the Target toggle.
2. Choose Achieve to reach a value, or Maintain to hold one.
3. Choose At least or At most to set the direction.
4. Enter the target value. The unit matches your metric, for example users.
5. Click Save card, or Update card when editing an existing card. The target line appears on the chart.

The goal line follows the value axis, so it stays readable when you switch a card between vertical and horizontal bars.

Confirm it worked

• The card appears on the dashboard and draws data for the dashboard's date range and filters.
• A Metrics card shows a subtitle under its title naming the measure and the events on the chart, such as "Events: Campaign created." for a count or "Session conversion %: Assistant-tool-call-ai-used." for a rate. A long list of events is truncated. A Conversion rate with two events joins them with an arrow, in numerator-to-denominator order.
• A Single value card names its period at the end of its subtitle, after a middle dot: "Full range" for Total period, or "Most recent day", "Most recent week", or "Most recent month" for Most recent, matching the dashboard's granularity. Because it sits at the end, a long event name can push it out of view on a narrow card. Hover the subtitle to read the whole thing, or widen the card.
• Percentage-based metrics, such as Conversion rate, are drawn as percentages on the axis.
• A card with more than one series keys each one with a colored block in the legend, and the tooltip uses the same block so the two match. Click a legend entry to strike it through and hide that series, and click it again to bring it back.
• Series colors come from one shared palette, so a given series is the same color whether you draw it as a line or as bars.
• A Metrics card with a target shows the goal line on the chart.
• A Funnel card draws one bar per step, split into reached and missed. A step holding more than one event is labelled Any of N on the axis rather than by event name. Funnel legends stay plain rather than clickable.
• A Retention grid shows one row per cohort: one per segment or account when you cohort by those, and one per period that had at least one Start event when you cohort by Start event date. Periods where nobody did the Start event are skipped, so a 30-day range can show fewer than 30 rows.

If a card has no data

Card-specific checks first:

• Funnel — the conversion time window may be shorter than users realistically take. Widen it and see whether the later steps fill in.
• Retention — if only the leftmost columns have numbers, the cohorts are too recent for the later periods. Widen the dashboard's date range. An empty Retention card also names the reason: "No cohorts started in this date range" when you cohort by Start event date and nobody did the Start event, and "No retention activity in this date range" when you cohort by segments or accounts, where the cohorts exist but nobody returned.
• Metrics — a Conversion rate with a second event is measuring against that narrower group, so an empty result can mean the denominator is empty rather than the numerator.
• Metrics drawn as a Table — an em dash means that period was never measured, which is different from a measured zero. Widen the date range if a whole column reads as dashes.

For the checks that apply to every card, such as the date range, event filters and dashboard-level segment filters, see Analytics dashboards overview.